Mallet to 15 m tall. Lignotuber absent.Bark smooth throughout, grey and silvery grey, shedding in strips.Branchlets lacking oil glands in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1.3–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, 7.5–11(14) cm long, 1.3–2.3(2.8) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, concolorous, glossy, dark green, side-veins at about 45° to midrib, reticulation moderate to dense, intramarginal vein close to margin, oil glands intersectional, few, or not visible. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, pendulous, peduncles 1–3.1 cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.7–1.4 cm long. Mature buds elongated-ovoid with conspicuous longitudinal ribs on hypanthium only, 1.5–2.2 cm long, 0.7–0.9 cm wide, scar present, operculum conical, unribbed, stamens all inflexed, anthers cuboid, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers creamy white. Fruit on down-turned peduncles, pedicellate (pedicels 0.8–1.3 cm long), truncate-globose, 0.7–1.2 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm wide, shallowly ribbed, staminophore persistent and obscuring the vertically descending disc, valves 4, prominently exserted and fragile. Seeds brown to grey-brown, 1–2.8 mm long, ovoid or flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface smooth or very shallowly reticulate and sometimes longitudinally furrowed, hilum ventral.Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): (data from Nicolle, ibid.) cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems weakly square in cross-section; leaves always at least shortly petiolate, linear at lower nodes becoming elliptical to ovate, to 2.5 cm long, 1.5 cm wide, blue-green.
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